The Future of Market Research: Managing Vendors and Outsourcing

STUDY OVERVIEW

The role of the market research function is expanding to provide valuable insights that are strategically important to brand and marketing teams. As part of this increased work load, market research leaders are increasingly relying on vendors and outsourcing.

Best Practices, LLC conducted this research to understand the best practices in managing vendor relationships. This study reviews how leading companies use guidelines to identify "best fit" vendors, integrate preferred vendors into the supply chain and use a hands-on approach to manage vendors.

KEY TOPICS

• Vendor selection and development guidelines
• Preferred vendor integration
• Approach to managing vendors

• Spending trends for outsourcing
• Level of anticipated future use of outside resources for select market research activities
• Anticipated amount of future use of market research contractors/suppliers

• Match skill sets required by project with those available from vendors: Research organizations at leading pharmaceutical company and a top manufacturing firm have developed detailed plans to identify the vendors with the skill sets that are most appropriate for their needs

The research employed a data gathering approach that gleaned quantitative data from 42 manager and executives from 34 leading companies in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. In addition, six executives participated in in-depth interviews.

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